Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

Shep and Joey had taken a leave of absence from the group. They were off hustling ideas to make some cash to pay off our tremendous debt and keep us on the road. In the interim we were being supervised by Leo Fenn, who was Shep and Joey’s temporary partner. We felt abandoned, but we couldn’t blame them for wanting to be involved with other projects that promised to be more profitable than the band. Frank Zappa seemed to feel the same way about us. Our relationship with him had completely disintegrated. On top of that he sold his record company to its distributor, Warner Brothers, and they weren’t thrilled about having us on their label at the time. They said there was a slim possibility they would back us in recording a single if we could find the right producer.

We had been looking for the right producer all along. It was clear that a hit song was the only way we’d ever make it. David Briggs, who did Easy Action, was an excellent producer for a group who knew what they were doing in the first place. We needed a producer who would teach us how to make an album, someone who was talented and perceptive enough to make our sound commercial. It was no easy job to be sure. The stage show, we agreed, could stay as crazy as we wanted, as long as the music sold.

In late September of 1970 Shep was wandering through the streets of Yorkville in Toronto when he came across the Nimbus 9 Studios, Jack Richardson’s production house and a well-known Canadian hit factory. Richardson had produced several smash albums, including a national number one single by the Guess Who, “American Woman.” Shep walked in and asked for an audience with Richardson, but it was impossible to see him. In order to reach Richardson you had to work your way up a long line of assistants, foils and flunkies. Shep told Leo Fenn to get in touch with Richardson, no matter what. It wasn’t that Richardson was the only producer in the world, he was the last producer who hadn’t turned us down. So Leo Fenn started on the obstacle course to get to Richardson, beginning with his lowliest assistant, a nineteen-year-old Jewish hippie named Bob Ezrin. Ezrin was the opposite of everything we were. He wore blue work shirts and love beads and had shoulder-length brown hair. Leo Fenn sent Ezrin a copy of Easy Action and he hated it. This bright, sensitive boy with a classical music background played twenty seconds of each cut and told Richardson we were rank amateurs and the albums wasn’t worth the ten cents of vinyl it was cut on. Leo Fenn had heard all that before. He begged Ezrin to see us in person. It was the key — supposedly — to understanding our music. After literally hundreds of phone calls Leo wore Ezrin down, and he finally agreed to at least meet the members of the group at the Skyline Hotel, where we stayed the night after I dumped watermelon on the cripples.

He walked into our hotel room and I saw panic on his face, as if he had just opened a surprise package and found a box full of maggots. Not only was it bad enough we were lousy musicians, but we were gay too! I was wearing skintight pants with seductive splits up the side and when I saw Ezrin look away in disgust I goaded him by asking him if he liked the belt I was wearing, a three-year-old painted leather strap, curled over from rain and perspiration. I thought he would vomit. Talk about bad first impressions, wait until he told Richardson what we were really like!

It really didn’t matter to Leo Fenn what Ezrin told Richardson. Leo wouldn’t let him alone. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not for a minute. The phone calls continued to come into Nimbus 9 by the hundreds.

Ezrin: “No. Jack Richardson is not interested. No body is interested. I told you yesterday, Leo. Please stop calling here. It’s no dice.”

Leo: “But just come and see them in person. See them do one live show. That’s all I’m asking you. One live show. What can you tell from meeting them in a hotel room? If you see them live you’ll understand what they re getting at.”

Ezrin: “I heard all about the chickens and watermelon and it’s just not good enough. Chickens and watermelon can’t be put on an album. They just don’t have the sound or talent.”

It went on that way right through the rest of the summer and fall of 1970. We played twelve dates in the midwest in September, which included the last of the outdoor festivals, before the season was over. In October Shep booked us into Max’s Kansas City in New York to see if there was a producer or a record company — anybody at all — who was interested in us.